Less than 24 hours after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump announced plans to launch a token through his World Liberty Financial project, many crypto users criticized the move through social media.
In August, Donald Trump and his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, began teasing a decentralized finance (DeFi) project through X without many details regarding its purpose. The Republican candidate made headlines on Sept. 12, announcing that he would host an X Spaces discussion about World Liberty Financial on Sept. 18.
In the lead-up to the X Spaces event, some pro-crypto Trump supporters expressed skepticism about the idea. Castle Island Ventures partner Nic Carter reportedly said the project was a “huge mistake,” claiming his campaign was “cashing in on his recent embrace of crypto in a kind of naive way.”
Mixed response after launch
The X Spaces event revealed few details about the project besides the leaders’ plan to launch a WLFI token, which they did not consider a security under the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s purview. Some crypto users took to social media to suggest that Trump had lost their vote by associating himself with the project.
“Trump launching a sh*tcoin may have been the final straw to lose my vote,” said Mitchell Askew on X. “It’s one thing for him to be ‘pro Crypto’ instead of just ‘pro Bitcoin’ – not everyone is a maxi, I get it. But it’s another thing to drop a 70% pre-mined token on his followers 7 weeks before the election This just adds to a growing list of unforced errors from the Trump Campaign.”
Source: Youshouldrelax1
Others on X who seemed to support the Republican candidate did not explicitly say they wouldn’t be voting for him in November but suggested that the timing of the WLFI project was bad and potentially risky. The project’s launch came less than a week after many pundits said Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris won a televised debate with Trump, tightening what will likely be an extremely close election.
“[…] before the voter who is not a staunchly single-issue Bitcoin or, more broadly, crypto voter, there are so many other issues […] I can’t say that there’s proof of pivot,” Penn State Dickinson Law Professor Tonya Evans, the author of Digital Money Demystified, told Cointelegraph. “Those who are not single-issue voters have to take a second look at the reality. [Trump] did not speak clearly or well [about] the logistics of the plan. This was built up as the moment that we get a plan and not ‘concepts of a plan.’”
On single-issue crypto voters, Evans added:
“I don’t see it [costing Trump any support]. I see some jokes. I see that segment of the industry a little more quiet than they were earlier, but I haven’t seen any virtue signaling or otherwise that they would make a different decision.”
Related: Trump made many promises to Bitcoiners — Can he keep them?
With 49 days until US Election Day, many polls showed that Harris was neck and neck with Trump nationally, including crucial battleground states that could determine the victor. Many former Republican lawmakers, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, have said they will be voting for Harris in 2024. However, Trump still has the support of many members of his party currently in office.
Source: Representative French Hill
Unlike Trump, Vice President Harris has not made crypto part of her economic platform, but one of her senior campaign advisers said in August that she would “support policies” for the industry’s growth. A political action committee supporting the Democratic candidate, Future Forward, also accepts contributions in cryptocurrency.
Magazine: Bitcoiners are ‘all in’ on Trump since Bitcoin ’24, but it’s getting risky